Category Archive

VeriSign has just released it’s latest issue of its Domain Name Industry Brief which shows that the internet grew by nearly 12 million domain names in the first quarter of 2016 to 326.4 million domain names; equating to a 3.8 percent increase over the previous quarter.

The report shows the current 10 largest TLDs as .com .tk .cn .de .net .org .uk .ru .nl and .info

The idea is to bring the owners of premium domain names together with angel investors and young, skilled developers, with the hope that some workable business ideas might emerge.

Codemology is a new form of workflow designed for technology teams to achieve optimal outcomes. We integrate the best practices from multiple disciplines to help teams create a Minimum Viable Product for a domain in just one weekend. Our framework seeks to foster creativity through divergent thinking and teaches teams how to identify novel ideas from the excess supply of premium domains in the market.

The developers keep the IP rights to whatever they code during the event. It’s up to the domain owner to choose to collaborate, buy their IP or walk away.

At the end of this month the .nz domain name space will undergo a momentous, once only change. From 1pm, 30 September 2014 (NZDT) people will be able to register or reserve domain names in the second level directly before the .nz – e.g. anyname.nz

The Domain Name Commission is offering some Registrants the option to reserve the shorter version of their .nz domain name for up to two years. Reserving the shorter version of a name gives Registrants time to decide whether they want it or not, without anyone else being able to register it in that time.

A two-year time frame was deemed a sufficient enough amount of time for Registrants with the reserving option to consider the idea. It would also give, for example, businesses, clubs and other types of bodies time to change their signs, vehicles, etc. to incorporate their new domain name.

Those eligible to reserve can do so by going to the www.anyname.nz website with their Unique Domain Authentication Identifier (UDAI) from 1pm, 30 September 2014. Though it should be noted that anyone who chooses to reserve their .nz domain name directly at the second level will no longer have any rights to this name if they let their existing domain name lapse.

When Nominet opened up the second level of the .uk namespace, they gave priority to registrants in the .co.uk namespace over those in other second levels such as .org.uk, net.uk or .me.uk. The Domain Name commissioner for .nz has taken a different approach which doesn’t offer precedence for co.nz or precedence for earlier registration dates.

“For reasons of fairness, where there is more than one Registrant competing for a .nz domain name to be registered directly at the second level the Domain Name Commission does not believe preference could be given to the oldest registration.

Similarly, the Domain Name Commission does not believe one second level should have preference over any other. For example, the Registrant of anyname.co.nz should not be treated differently to the Registrant of anyname.school.nz.

Afilias is holding it’s third auction of .info names, domain names it reclaimed from the initial .info sunrise period. The auction is generating a lot of interest, with already over 200 bidders registering to bid on the domain with most interest. There are over 3 days remaining before registrations for bidding close and private auctions begin for the first batch of names.

The auction runs from May 3rd to May 10th on the NamJet Auction platform. The starting bid on any name was $69 but bidders have already pushed the opening bids as high as $2,501 for some names. Bidders who wish to place bids above $2,500 need to become verified before placing any bids.

This is the first time Afilias has used NameJet for it’s auctions, for the first and second auctions it used GoDaddy. The highest bids in the first auction were cancer.info $16,005 and gambling.info also $16,005. In the second auction, the highest bids were for onlinecasino.info $30,005 and flowers.info $22,005. (If you’re wondering why there is an extra $5 on each bid it’s a quirk of the GoDaddy auction platform.)

At the moment the names generating the most interest from the 79 premium domains in the coming third auction are gold.info, auto.info, jobs.info, hosting.info and games.info.

GoDaddy has just auctioned 106 names on behalf of the .info registry Afilias in a low $100 reserve auction and 103 of the names sold. These names were originally registered during the Sunrise process for the launch of .info and were reclaimed by the registry when the registrants were unable to demonstrate the necessary supporting trademark rights.

Overstock.com, Inc., today announced the launch of a new consumer information portal O.info. The website features blogs, reviews and buying guides, all to help consumers make informed decisions about products before purchasing. Along with consumer goods, O.info contains in-depth information on cars, travel, insurance and business products.